Miles Kington: Only a wuss would use the word 'wuthering'

'Define "wuthering", he said. "Go on. Tell me what wuthering is. What does a height do when it wuthers?'

The other night the conversation in the pub turned to the matter of the proposed footballers' strike. It turned out that everyone was in favour of the strike. Not because they thought the footballers had a good case, but because if they went on strike, there would be no bloody football on television

"Although," said the man with the dog, "knowing the TV people, they'd probably make arrangements to bring in soccer from Australia or somewhere."

"What do you mean, 'knowing the TV people'?" said the resident Welshman. "You don't know the TV people! Who'd even want to know the TV people?"

"I know one thing about TV people," said the man with the dog, "and that is that they are all wusses."

"What's a wuss?" asked the Major.

There was a pause as everyone digested this. The Major is not, of course, a Major – it's just that every pub is expected to have a Major, so we had decided that this chap should take on the role. And he certainly has. From being a slightly gruff accountant he has grown into being a rather reactionary military stick-in-the-mud, even though he has never been in the Army in his life. You can always rely on him to enliven a conversation by shooting it in the leg.

"A wuss is more or less the same as a wimp," said the lady with the yellow hairdo, helpfully.

"What's a wimp?" asked the Major.

We glanced at each other. Was the Major overacting a bit?

"Well," said the landlord, "it's an ineffective, weedy sort of a person. The sort who always lets the side down."

"Oh, a milksop!" said the Major. "A nancy boy. A lily-livered type. A broken reed..."

"Something like that," said the landlord.

"And how do you spell 'wuss'?" the Major asked. "Is it w-o-o-s-s?"

"No," said the resident Welshman. "I believe it's w-u..."

"Can't be," said the Major. "There's no word in English that begins with w-u..."

There was another pause. When you say something as dogmatically as that, there is just a chance you may know what you are talking about. And in any case, everyone in a pub loves that kind of challenge. It's as good as doing a pub quiz without the pain of organising teams. The mental race to produce a word starting with "wu" was on. The Welshman got there first.

"Wunderkind."

"That's not English, it's German," said the Major.

"Wun Ton soup," said the yellow-haired lady.

"Chinese and anyway it's Won Tun," said the Major.

"Wurlitzer," said the landlord.

The Major did not even reply to this wild effort.

"Wuthering," I said.

The Major turned to look at me.

"Define 'wuthering'," he said. "Go on. Tell me what wuthering is and I'll grant you the point. What does a height do when it wuthers?"

"That's not the point," I said. "The word exists. We know it exists because of Charlotte Bronte. To know what it means is unnecessary."

The Major and I glowered at each other. Then I bought him a drink and we were friends again.

"Aren't you going to buy me one?" said the yellow-haired lady.

"That depends," I said. "I don't know what your tipple of the moment is."

I think I may have explained before that the lady with the coloured hairdo changes her colour according to the drink she favours. Black in Guinness season, red for wine, etc. The last time she went yellow she was in an Advokaat-drinking phase.

"Pernod," she said.

We watched in respect as the landlord poured her a Pernod.

"Why Pernod?" I asked.

"I have always loved the Belle Epoque," she said. "I may not look like the Belle Epoque, but at least with Per-nod I can smell like the Belle Epoque."

"Just watch out you don't get addicted," said the resident Welshman. "Think of all those fine Frenchmen who got addicted to absinthe. Verlaine. Rimbaud. Absinthe and pastis are closely connected. Deadly stuff.

"The only person I ever knew who got addicted to drink," said the yellow-haired lady, "owed his downfall to a fondness for plastic mugs."

There was a strange silence. The she told us the even stranger following story...

Continued tomorrow.